Microsoft Research Technical Report MSR-TR-98-71 “A Flexible New Technique for Camera Calibration” discloses a method for compensating image distortions whereby a mathematical rule is used to map a source image recorded by a camera onto a target image. The computational rule calculates the corrected target image from the source image loaded into main memory.
In occupant protection systems, exacting requirements are placed on the speed of optical image recognition, as the position of a person on a vehicle seat must be rapidly established in the event of an accident in order to deploy the restraint system accordingly. The image sensors provided in the camera of an imaging system record images of an image area in close succession, the resulting image data of an image having to be read out of the image sensor by a control unit before the next image is recorded.
This requires a large amount of memory for storing the image data of an image, precise timing for transmitting the image data to the control unit and considerable computing power for further processing of the images.